Malou Innocent2015-08-02T16:52:23-04:00Malou Innocenthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/index.php?author=malou-innocentCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Malou InnocentGood old fashioned elbow grease.The GOP on Foreign Policy: Rhetoric v. Realitytag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.28775592013-03-14T15:13:37-04:002013-05-14T05:12:01-04:00Malou Innocenthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/malou-innocent/
For many compelling reasons, conservatives and Republicans distrust the "nanny state." They argue that government intrusions and wealth redistribution programs harm the free market, curtail individual freedoms, and concentrate power in the hands of incompetent bureaucrats. Government, they often claim, cannot do anything right. They often invoke President Ronald Reagan's aphorism: "government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem."

Conservatives and their major political party of choice, the GOP, recognize the limitations of the government's ability to manage health care or educate America's children. But that skepticism of centralized power and state-led social engineering apparently do not apply beyond America's borders.

It was telling when Tea Party champion and Florida Senator Marco Rubio said last April, "I always start by reminding people that what happens all over the world is our business." For years, President George W. Bush boasted of using U.S. taxpayer dollars to build schools, roads, and hospitals -- in Iraq.

Conservatives and Republicans generally argue that the federal government's primary constitutional function is national defense, and that America's security and prosperity is linked to stability abroad. Few see the contradiction between their grandiose global ambitions and their principled opposition to the welfare state. Nation-building in the name of the "war on terror," itself a counterproductive tool against terrorism, entails what conservatives deride: nationalist collectivism, curtailed due-process rights, and huge, open-ended fiscal commitments supported by government borrowing.

Economic historian Robert Higgs has long argued that the biggest increases in the scope of government power have historically been during times of war. Militarism has brought with it new federal bureaus, the nationalization of private industries, price and wage controls, and, most importantly for conservative proponents of limited constitutional government, the erosion of civil liberties and the suppression of dissent and free speech. As early 20th century progressive writer Randolph Bourne famously warned, "War is the health of the state."

In their support for expansive government power abroad, one wonders if many conservatives have become desensitized to the allure of government power at home. Republican congresses of the last decade have racked up an extensive record of anti-free market policies: protectionist tariffs, corporate subsidies, increased regulations, and entitlement expansions (most notably, Medicare Part D). They scream that America is speeding toward financial insolvency, but ignore their own reckless driving for much of the trip. Republicans decry the meddling under President Obama, but in the Bush years willingly surrendered to the executive branch on the most pressing matters shaping our government: issues of war and peace.

To its peril, the party of Lincoln has shunned America's Founding Fathers. In its global crusade against tyranny, it has ignored the early generation of American statesmen who warned of the corrupting influence of standing armies and war. Far from being peaceniks or isolationists, they understood that trying to manage the world would entangle America in its rivalries; in due course, the unfettered authority that government claims in times of war would corrode our limited constitutional government and concentrate power in the executive.

Since the atrocities of 9/11 -- and following more than a decade of intractable foreign entanglements -- many Americans wish to reduce military spending and troop commitments abroad. Instead, the most prominent voices of the Republican-conservative nexus have called for increasing military spending, intervening in Libya, arming rebels in Syria, nation-building in Afghanistan, and undermining Iran in Iraq. For a political party already wildly out of step with many Americans -- especially young people -- on the economy and social issues, its unceasing militarism will continue to put it at odds with a growing portion of the electorate.

For a coherent and winning formula, the broader conservative movement must understand that its inclination for war is an inclination for more government. Worse, the establishment Republican pro-war stance reads as a tacit endorsement of statism and the federal government's competence. Until limited government proponents rectify the incompatibilities at the heart of their ideology, the drums of war will march them into obscurity.]]>On Benghazi, the Buck Stops With Hillarytag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.25339492013-01-23T10:54:07-05:002013-03-25T05:12:01-04:00Malou Innocenthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/malou-innocent/testifies today on the September 11, 2012, terrorist attack in Benghazi. The buck stops with Secretary Clinton -- and it should. But members of Congress will focus on politically charged and distracting issues. The terrorist attack on the consulate was abhorrent. But a broader discussion about the NATO-led regime change in Libya -- and its unfolding political aftermath in Mali -- would be a better use of Congress' time. The consequences of intervention should not be ignored, and its antecedents must be explored.

Secretary Clinton was among the handful of U.S. and European officials who urged Western military action in Libya, a mission that entangled the United States in yet another volatile post-revolutionary Muslim country, and accelerated neighboring Mali's destabilization. North Africa's vortex of Islamist crosscurrents has now sucked America and France into Mali. Indeed, the reverberations of NATO-led regime change in Libya impelled U.S. and French involvement in Mali. Like the conflict in Libya, France cannot do the heavy lifting in Mali on its own. Senators should ask: How far will the conflict in Mali go? Will the United States end up holding the broken pieces once again? Is America now "leading from behind"?

Furthermore, Congress should ask Secretary Clinton about how the White House shamelessly recast the word "war" into "kinetic military operations." That Orwellian revisionism allowed the administration to side step the War Powers Act and bypass congressional authorization. In the course of supposedly demonstrating America's selflessness in the promotion of democracy abroad, the administration compromised the integrity of our institutions at home. In that respect, the Libyan adventure has added to the steadyaggrandizement of America's imperial presidency.

Secretary Clinton probably won't go into any of that, and pitchfork wielding senators likely won't ask her about those far-reaching consequences.

This post originally appeared on Cato at Liberty.]]>Romney vs. Reagantag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.19511212012-10-09T10:39:42-04:002012-12-09T05:12:02-05:00Malou Innocenthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/malou-innocent/Yesterday, Republican Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney delivered a major foreign policy speech charging President Barack Obama with a weak and bumbling record. Although Romney emphasized his differences with his opponent on global security challenges, his criticisms highlighted the contradictions within his own foreign policy platform.

Romney continues to hammer Obama's mishandling of the assaults on U.S. diplomatic posts across the Muslim World, and the administration's alleged cover-up of events in Libya. Yet, Romney hasn't explained how he would have handled Middle East policy differently. Indeed, U.S. policy in the Middle East has been a bipartisan failure. Romney points to Ronald Reagan's foreign policy as his guiding light, but Romney could have leveled similar criticisms against the Republican icon for the handling of the 1983 attacks in Beirut, Lebanon, against the U.S. Embassy and U.S. Marine Corps barracks -- the most visible and vulnerable symbols of American power.

Nearly three decades ago, in support of Lebanon's minority Christian government, President Reagan inserted U.S. forces into that country's multi-sided civil war, a conflict that at one point involved 25 different armed factions. Unsurprisingly, once Washington joined Lebanon's civil conflict, America became the natural enemy of its ally's opponents. In March 1983, Muslim and Druze forces attacked U.S. troops; in April, a car bomb destroyed the U.S. Embassy, killing 17 Americans. Adopting Romney's recommended approach of strong American leadership and a muscular foreign policy, Reagan retaliated. He expanded America's military presence, attacked artillery batteries outside Beirut, and initiated a naval bombardment of Muslim and Druze positions -- not to defend American personnel under attack, but in support of the operations of Lebanese Army units.

On October 23, Islamist radicals struck the U.S. Marine Corps barracks in Beirut, killing 241 American Marines, soldiers, and sailors. Although Reagan initially responded with the typical American rhetoric of resolve and launched additional air and naval strikes, eventually he recognized that the deployment of U.S. troops were neither protecting vital American interests nor preserving peace in the region, a transformation reflected in his diary. In February 1984 Reagan finally redeployed U.S. Marines to ships off-shore, ending one of Washington's least productive and most pointless military interventions.

Fast forward to today. President Barack Obama's decision to intervene last year in the Libyan civil injected America into an already unstable region. A year later, reportssuggest that operatives linked to al Qaeda remain active. Armed militias have detained thousands of former regime loyalists and engaged inwidespread torture. The country's instability has since spilled into neighboring states. Moreover, Obama's unilateral decision to intervene contravened the Constitution and congressional war powers. Despite overthrowing a dictator, the fact that our ambassador still became a target only reinforces the argument that Washington should not have intervened where America had no vital interests at stake.

But rather than criticize Obama for a military action that advanced no important strategic interests and demonstrated the limitations of American leadership, Romney -- perplexingly -- is advocating an even more interventionist foreign policy. No wonder a Pew Research Center Poll last month found that the public believes Obama outstrips Romney in terms of "good judgment in a crisis" and "making wise decisions in foreign policy." Just as Romney correctly observed that "hope is not a strategy," neither is Romney's appeal to strength, manliness, and other nebulous traits. As Washington Times reporter Stephen Dinan recently pointed out about Romney, "[E]ven some Republicans have questioned how his tougher talk translates into specific policies."

As they do with Obama, journalists and news anchors should press Romney to provide foreign policy specifics beyond relentless fist pumps and chest thumping. Voters at campaign rallies and those in the American news media should ask Romney probing questions about his international plans for the most important job in the land, such as:

When his campaign claims "we need to shape world events," does that mean a President Romney would intervene more often militarily overseas? If so, how would Romney increase public support for risking American lives for at most peripheral interests?

With the economy and the deficit the top issues for most Americans, how much more taxpayer dollars would Romney spend on military and economic assistance to foreign countries?

Given America's fiscal crisis -- and that a majority of Americans favor cutting military outlays as a way to reduce the deficit -- where would Romney find the money to spend four percent of GDP on military spending -- an increase of $2 trillion? How would he pay for that and close America's budget deficit?

Romney talks as if he plans to fix every problem around the world. Yet precisely how that would be possible -- and how much he would spend in both lives and treasure -- remains unexplained. Over 11 years of perpetual war and drone attacks across Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Yemen and Somalia have demonstrated that many of the world's most pressing problems cannot be resolved militarily.

No matter how much Romney bloviates, as president he would have no more success than Obama in forcing the rest of the world to do as Washington dictates. The more Romney talks about foreign policy, the more he illustrates that he is tone-deaf about international affairs. After all, the problem for America is that it intervenes around the world too much, not too little.

Malou Innocent (@malouinnocent) is a foreign policy analyst at the Cato Institute, and Doug Bandow, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, served as special assistant to President Ronald Reagan.

]]>Bumps on the New Silk Roadtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.15280452012-05-18T14:37:44-04:002012-07-18T05:12:06-04:00Malou Innocenthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/malou-innocent/May 20 in Chicago, coalition partners hope to stabilize Afghanistan with development projects beyond 2014. One initiative is the "New Silk Road," which aims to revamp Afghanistan's ancient position as the regional trade hub linking the West and Far East. But there are several roadblocks to turning this fantasy into reality.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton proclaimed late last year in Dushanbe, "we want Afghanistan to be at the crossroads of economic opportunities going north and south and east and west, which is why it's so critical to more fully integrate the economies of the countries in this region in South and Central Asia."

The New Silk Road would develop the economic and political connectivity of countries across the region through the improvement of transit and energy infrastructure, the liberalization of trade barriers, and the removal of bureaucratic customs procedures.

While such a project seems feasible at an academic level, U.S. officials have been pushing this scheme since the Silk Road Strategy Act of 1999, with little effect.

First, Afghanistan's instability poses the most daunting challenge. Indeed, April was 2012's bloodiest month for U.S. troops, and 2011 was the fifth straight year in which civilian casualties rose. It is unrealistic to assume that Afghanistan's security will miraculously improve over the next 18 months and beyond, much less that it will yield the stable environment conducive to private sector-led growth any time soon.

Second, the relationship among countries in Central Asia remains strained, making regional political and economic integration that much harder. The border between Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan has been closed for nearly 21 months following violence in southern Kyrgyzstan in 2010. Tensions between Tajikistan and Uzbekistan have impacted the economic ties between them. The latter has hiked cargo transit fees five times in the last two years, and Tajikistan too has raised its tariffs twice over the same period.

Unsurprisingly, some regional actors view America's New Silk Road with immense suspicion. Russia, an important member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, has been critical of U.S. motives for the initiative, while China, another member, is building its own version of the Silk Road that has legitimacy in the eyes of many in the region.

Finally, Pakistan and Iran, both critical players in the region, have extremely tense relations with the U.S. As Andrew C. Kuchins, one of America's leading experts on Central Asia says, "Iran and Pakistan are skeptical of the New Silk Road strategy to the extent that they view it as a U.S. plan."

Indeed, ties between Washington and Islamabad have deteriorated significantly, especially in the aftermath of Operation Geronimo, which killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden inside Pakistani territory last year. And despite Islamabad's soaring energy needs, in March, Secretary Clinton warned that Washington would impose sanctions if Pakistan pushed ahead with a proposed gas pipeline project with Iran. Such inconsistent policies -- of calling for regional integration and subsequently sabotaging it -- does not enhance confidence that the U.S. will limit its meddling in the region.

Meanwhile, relations between Washington and Tehran are virtually non-existent. Not only has the U.S. not operated an embassy in Tehran since 1979, but also continually threatens to attack Iran and has repeatedly slapped it with sanctions. On the nuclear issue, both seem unwilling to engage in direct talks, much less make reciprocal concessions.

Iran and Pakistan aside, Washington has few effective instruments to submerge the differences among various countries in the region, most notably between India and Pakistan in the pursuit of common objectives.

The reasoning behind the New Silk Road is that economic incentives will reinforce political integration and long-term stabilization. This, however, puts the cart before the horse. For centuries, Central Asia has been a hotbed of regional competition. Consequently, anything approaching an adequate or even plausible strategy must accept the likelihood that the region's underlying historical rivalries might be immutable. Moreover, America's interests are not the same as that of various countries in the region, and to assume otherwise hinders the ability to shape a coherent regional economic strategy.

The U.S. and NATO officials continue to call for pursuing greater regional diplomacy. They have yet to put forward concrete ideas about the content of such a negotiation that will include all of Afghanistan's neighbors.

Malou Innocent is a foreign policy analyst at the Cato Institute and Tridivesh Singh Maini is an associate fellow at the Observer Research Foundation.]]>Security Pact Ensures America's Presence in Afghanistantag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.14692102012-05-01T18:27:22-04:002012-07-01T05:12:24-04:00Malou Innocenthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/malou-innocent/Bush the Younger's many trips to war-torn Iraq and displays just how bad security is in Afghanistan. Indeed, despite the administration's talk about drawing-down, the strategic partnership agreement signed today in Kabul extends Washington's military and financial support to the endemically corrupt Karzai regime well beyond 2014.

The Taliban's most powerful narrative is that foreigners are occupying Afghanistan and supporting its corrupt centralized government. That is more than mere propaganda. It is reality. Transparency International was correct -- save for North Korea and Somalia, Afghanistan is the most corrupt country in the world. The Karzai cartel and its band of thugs and warlords are the embodiment of social injustice. The nation-building mission in Afghanistan is a failure not of democracy promotion, but the result of bringing injustice and crony capitalism to a desperate and war-ravaged people.

A senior administration official today warned of repeating the mistake of allowing the Taliban to reemerge in Afghanistan. In the process, however, the United States is repeating a mistake that experts contendhelped tocontribute to the devastating terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001: unwavering economic support and political coverto the Muslim world's most corrupt and illegitimate regimes. Some will argue that America has a moral obligation to prevent the reemergence of reprehensible groups like the Taliban. But America never made a substantive policy shift toward or against the Taliban's misogynistic, oppressive and militant Islamic regime when it controlled Afghanistan in the 1990s. Thus, the present moral outrage against the group can be interpreted as opportunistic. Sadly, Washington's current embrace of the kleptocratic Karzai regime not only contradicts the basic moral principles that America purports to impose on the rest of the world, but also does little to advance our security, drives foreigners to commit terrorist acts, and is detrimental to our long-term goal of advancing our country's most cherished values.

Cross-posted from Cato@Liberty.]]>Bin Laden's Death, One Year Ontag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.14680102012-05-01T12:44:00-04:002012-07-01T05:12:24-04:00Malou Innocenthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/malou-innocent/counterproductive to the goal of stopping terrorism.

Certainly, bin Laden's killing does not mean the end of al Qaeda, but it does provide another reason to bring our ongoing sacrifice in blood and treasure in Afghanistan to a swift end. Moreover, Americans should be circumspect about planners in Washington expanding the War on Terror to distant enemies in Pakistan, Yemen, the Horn of Africa, and elsewhere. Al Qaeda and its associates have always been manageable security problems, not existential threats to America that require endless war by remote control.

The lesson of 9/11 and its Saudi terrorist financier is that would-be terrorists have reduced their dependence on specific base camps and physical havens. They can plan, organize, and train from virtually anywhere in the world, from Kandahar and Hamburg to Malaysia and Los Angeles. Indeed, the very al Qaeda terrorists responsible for 9/11 not only found sanctuary in poverty-stricken Afghanistan, but also in politically free and economically prosperous countries like Germany, Spain, and the United States. In this respect, policymakers and prominent opinion leaders must stop conflating the punishment of al Qaeda with the creation of stable societies, particularly when propping up corrupt and illegitimate foreign governments and waging counterinsurgency campaigns distracts from the conceptually simpler task of targeted counterterrorism measures to find and eliminate terrorist threats.

Cross-posted from Cato@Liberty.]]>'The American Homeland Is the Planet'tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.14328972012-04-17T18:05:50-04:002012-06-17T05:12:01-04:00Malou Innocenthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/malou-innocent/my colleagues and I have been arguing that disrupting, dismantling, and defeating al Qaeda does not require the occupation of Afghanistan or anywhere else. Wars are incredibly wasteful and counterproductive to the goal of stopping terrorism. Would-be terrorists, moreover, have reduced their dependence on "base camps" and "physical havens" because they can plan, organize, and train from virtually anywherein the world.

That is the notion that it is the responsibility of the U.S. government to keep Americans safe from all terrorist attacks, at all times; the insistence that one attack amounts to failure, that the standard for homeland security is perfection.

[...]

We await an American political leader who will tell us the Whole Truth: That in the emerging connected and networked world, we cannot be made totally safe. That despite their level efforts, life -- and strategy -- are full of choices, and tradeoffs. In so many ways, American public life these last few decades has been all about the avoidance of truth, and choice, and tradeoff, the promise that we could have everything and avoid the bill. Many bills are now coming due; long-delayed tradeoffs are being foisted. And one of them, sooner or later, will be the simple, unalterable fact: We cannot dominate the earth, and so we must accept some risk at home.

Unfortunately, U.S. officials remain hostage to the outdated notion that a specific territory matters -- they remain possessed by a sort of safe haven syndrome. But perhaps even more crucial is that government officials also remain fixated on heading off every conceivable hazard through greater government action.

I must admit, however, that the belief that America must stop any and all terrorist attacks by controlling the world's ungoverned spaces makes sense if one believes what the 9/11 Commission wrote on page 362 about warding off al Qaeda.

In this sense, 9/11 has taught us that terrorism against American interests 'over there' should be regarded just as we regard terrorism against America 'over here.' In this same sense, the American homeland is the planet. [Emphasis added]

Cross-posted from Cato@Liberty.]]>Calling It Quits in Afghanistantag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.13049072012-02-27T15:49:24-05:002012-04-28T05:12:01-04:00Malou Innocenthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/malou-innocent/How many more American soldiers and innocent Afghan civilians have to die before the Obama administration withdraws from Afghanistan? The burning of Qurans at a U.S. base outside of Kabul and the riots that followed might jeopardize the U.S. training mission in Afghanistan. On top of limited and potentially unsustainable security improvements, the spiraling violence does not instill confidence in our ability to achieve a "victory." It is time for the United States to downsize its mission in Afghanistan. Despite good intentions, we have overstayed our welcome.

Planners in Washington seem to forget that Afghans view us as guests in their country. In 2010, well before U.S. Marines urinated on insurgent corpses and Florida pastor Terry Jones promised to "stand up" to Islam and burn a Quran, Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai imposed a crackdown on alcohol consumption and closed a number of expat bars around Kabul, because they were deemed offensive to Islam. The Afghan general who carried out the alcohol raids told the Los Angeles Times it was done for "Allah's sake."

Many Afghans welcome assistance but resent the norms we have imposed on their society. Foreigners constantly change their mayors, their governors, and their customs. Afghans are told how to dress their women, what is culturally acceptable, and what is culturally repugnant. U.S. taxpayers are furious at politicians who think they know how to best spend other people's money, and yet Americans tend to ignore how intrusive our own military and civilian planners are to foreign peoples.

It should come as no surprise that a report published last May by the Kabul-based Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit concluded that negative sentiments in Afghanistan about democracy emerge from "the stated distaste among respondents for 'Western culture' and the potential threat it poses to 'Afghan culture,' traditional norms or values, and an Islamic identity."

The Quran burning and the grisly violence meted out against innocent people was not justified. Nevertheless, the fact remains that America is widely scorned throughout the region--in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

These underlying realities will not change with more time, more money, or more resources. To continue to train and assist the Afghan national army and police when distrust remains this high risks moreviolentincidents between U.S. military forces and their Afghan counterparts. Rather than become Afghanistan's perpetual crutch, Washington must cut its losses. The scale and length of this war has been a drain on U.S. taxpayers and is fiscally irresponsible. More importantly, no more American or Afghan lives should be lost in pursuit of a strategy that is not in America's national interest.

]]>War Vets and the New Hampshire Primarytag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.11944132012-01-09T13:18:13-05:002012-03-10T05:12:01-05:00Malou Innocenthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/malou-innocent/many Americans, a growing number of post-9/11 veterans care more about protecting and defending the United States and less about transforming failed states, democratizing the Middle East, protecting wealthy allies, and sacrificing more American lives in the name of global hegemony.

Last Friday, ahead of Tuesday's New Hampshire Primary, Gwen Ifill of the PBS Newshourinterviewed five Granite State Republicans and independents about their views on the Republican presidential field. In alluding to the divergence between keeping America safe and fighting wars indefinitely in the war on terror, New Hampshire voter and Iraq war veteran Joshua Holmes told Ifill:

HOLMES: ...We haven't defined what it is that is going to satisfy basically victory in the global war on terror. And until we define victory, until we develop a plan to achieve that victory and then to end the war, soldiers are going to continue to die.

IFILL: And who [of the candidates] do you think has got a plan?

HOLMES: I think that Dr. Paul is the first person, the only person now that Gary Johnson is out of the race. All of the other candidates are planning on continuing the global war on terror without any objectives.

Well, simply, the things that he was talking about four years ago have - they've manifested. I mean, he predicted the financial meltdown back in 2001 and warned about it for almost a decade before it happened.

He warned about the consequences of the Iraq war, especially the long-term consequences. And now we're actually seeing those consequences. And that opens people's minds to the idea that this guy, who did warn us, might have the solutions.

Mr. Holmes is notalone, particularly on the subject of war. One in three veterans of the post-9/11 military believe the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were not worth fighting. A majority, according to the Pew Research Center, think America should be focusing less on foreign affairs and more on its own problems.

Most of the Republican presidential candidates, however, seemalltoowilling to surrender more American treasure and possibly more American soldiers, sailors, Marines, and airmen for preemptive strikes against Iran. Republicans would do best to appreciate the critics of intervention, a growing number of whom now reside within the post-9/11 military.

Malou Innocent is a foreign policy analyst at the Cato Institute. ]]>Attack On U.S. Embassy Highlights Need To Exit Afghanistantag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.9613242011-09-13T22:23:40-04:002011-11-13T05:12:02-05:00Malou Innocenthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/malou-innocent/coordinated assault on the U.S. Embassy and NATO headquarters in Kabul as a "one-off" incident. But the attack is a vivid reminder of how poorly things are going, and why America needs to leave.

Spiraling violence came after significant increases in troops and resources. Defiant optimists have claimed that with more troops comes more combat and naturally, more casualties. But to accept that things will get worse before they get better is also a slippery slope: never giving up, no matter the cost, discourages a dispassionate assessment of whether a continued investment is justified. In turn, the longer we stay and the more money we spend, the more we feel compelled to remain to validate our investment. Unfortunately, the conventional wisdom, as expressed by President Obama in March 2009, is that "If Afghanistan falls to the Taliban... that country will again be a base for terrorists who want to kill as many of our people as they possibly can." We are also told that if America and its allies fail to create a minimally functioning government in Afghanistan, then Pakistan will collapse and its nuclear weapons will fall to the Taliban.

First, if Afghanistan were to fall to the Taliban, it is not clear that they would again host al Qaeda -- the very organization whose protection led to the Taliban's overthrow. Besides, targeted counterterrorism measures would be sufficient in the unlikely event that the Taliban were to provide shelter to al Qaeda. Moreover, to declare that Afghanistan can never again be a base for terrorists justifies indefinite war, which does less to serve the American public and more to benefit the private industries that profit from conflict and nation-building. Perhaps the greatest tragedy is that after a decade of war, more than $450 billion spent, and over 1,500 American lives lost, the United States can still be attacked by terrorists. This creates a humiliating situation in which our Afghanistan policy weakens the U.S. militarily and economically and fails to advance its vital national interests.

Second, an endless war of whack-a-mole does far more to inspire terrorists "to kill as many of our people as they possibly can." In this respect, our political leaders seem to have learned little from 9/11. The unintended consequence of U.S. intervention and meddling is that it serves as a radicalizing impetus. Regardless of what percentage of the Afghan population wants us to rebuild their country, our presence, however noble our intentions, can serve as both a method to combat insurgents and as the insurgents' most effective recruiting tool. Aside from that "mobilizing militants" dilemma, our elimination of Taliban figures (including shadow governors, mid-level commanders and weapons facilitators) may very well weaken the Taliban's chain of command, but it hasn't resulted in a decrease of Taliban activity. Indeed, the use of IEDs has reached record highs. Worse, the insurgents' second-largest funding source is the U.S. taxpayer, with stabilization and reconstruction money often being diverted to insurgents to pay them to ensure security. Of course, they then use U.S. taxpayer money to buy bombs and explosives to kill American troops and Afghan civilians.

Finally, U.S. officials are playing with fire if they think these conditions help strengthen neighboring Pakistan. Certainly, Rawalpindi's self-defeating support of Islamist proxies has not done its country any favors -- but neither has the coalition's presence next door. Continuing to stay the course in Afghanistan inspires the worst strategictendencies among Pakistani military planners. It also encourages militants to attack NATO supply vehicles entering Afghanistan (nothing new), and has inadvertently contributed to the very instability that leaders in Washington ostensibly seek to forestall. As Karachi goes, so goes Pakistan, and current developments are doing more to push militants from Pakistan's rural hinterland and into its major cities. Lastly, despite Washington's nuclear obsessions, a large-scale foreign troop presence in Afghanistan does not resolve the ongoing rivalry between Pakistan and India. In fact, Pakistan has been accelerating its production of nuclear material for bombs and their ability to delivery them over the past several years.

In the end, the current scale and scope of the coalition's mission in Afghanistan (over 100,000 troops and $120 billion per year from the U.S. alone) stems from overstated fears about what will follow if we fail. Luckily, America and its allies do not have to build a legitimate and stable Afghan government as an alternative to the Taliban. Al Qaeda is a manageable threat, and a conventional, definitive "victory" against them was never possible. Rather than drawing out our withdrawal and fighting an insurgency on behalf of an incompetent and illegitimate puppet regime in Kabul, American leaders should declare "mission accomplished."

Malou Innocent is a foreign policy analyst at the Cato Institute. ]]>Senate Report Slams Nation-Building Efforts in Afghanistantag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8733022011-06-08T14:46:40-04:002011-08-08T05:12:01-04:00Malou Innocenthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/malou-innocent/yet another U.S. government report, this one prepared by the Democratic majority staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, America's nation-building mission in Afghanistan has had little success in creating an economically viable and politically independent Afghan state.

The report also warns that the Afghan economy could slide into a depression with the inevitable decline of the foreign military and development spending that now provides 97 percent of the country's gross domestic product. [Emphasis added]

U.S. leaders could look at that statistic and justify prolonging the mission. In fact, the report suggests, "Afghanistan could suffer a severe economic depression when foreign troops leave in 2014 unless the proper planning begins now." Ironically, "proper planning" is the problem. The belief that outside planning can promote stability and growth has the potential to leave behind exactly the opposite.

While no one would deny that Afghanistan looks a lot better than it did in 2001, there's a reason why American leaders might be sorely disappointed with the outcome when the coalition begins handing off responsibility to Afghans. As the bipartisan Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan warned last week in a separate report, "the United States faces new waves of waste in Iraq and Afghanistan." Without adequate planning to pay for ongoing operations and maintenance, U.S.-funded reconstruction projects in both countries will likely fall into disrepair.

The core problem is that top-down development strategies often deepen, rather than strengthen, a foreign country's dependence on the international donor community. My colleague, development expert Ian Vasquez, once wrote, "Providing development assistance to such countries may improve the apparent performance of foreign aid, but it may also help to create dependence and delay further reform, problems that have long plagued official development assistance." [Emphasis added]

Indeed, complaints about America's presence in Afghanistan typically focus on troop levels; rarely discussed is the way in which foreign-led development schemes can deprive locals of the experience of planning projects, managing funds, and procuring goods: what they call in the industry, "building local capacity." As my friend Joe Storm and I wrote a while back: "US-government contractors are mired in mismanagement and failure, perpetuating dependence at best. Even the Senate Foreign Relations Committee admits, "Donor practices of hiring Afghans at inflated salaries have drawn otherwise qualified civil servants away from the Afghan Government and created a culture of aid dependency."

Dependence, of course, is only one of many problems. According to the report: "Foreign aid, when misspent, can fuel corruption, distort labor and goods markets, undermine the host government's ability to exert control over resources, and contribute to insecurity."

Because development is plagued with inadequate oversight, many development contracts are dispersed independently of the quality of services provided. During a trip to Afghanistan some time ago, I heard story after story about development projects being abandoned before completion, American-built schools without teachers to staff them, and billions of dollars charged to American taxpayers for unfinished work that leave Afghans disillusioned. Naturally, turning our mission in Afghanistan into one of limitless scope and open-ended duration perpetuates this massive fraud and waste.

So, who's at fault? Ourselves. Recall the December 5, 2001, Bonn Agreement, which proclaimed the international community's determination to "end the tragic conflict in Afghanistan and promote national reconciliation, lasting peace, stability and respect for human rights in the country." We've set the bar so incredibly high for a country that lacks the fundamental criteria intrinsic to the Westphalia model: (a) a legitimate host nation government (b) that possesses secure and internationally recognized borders, and (c) wields a monopoly on the use of force. None of these criteria exist. So far, we are 0-3: 0 wins, 3 losses.

With this latest report from members of Senate Foreign Relations Committee, we are reminded yet again not only of the importance of scaling down lofty expectations, but also recognizing the unintended consequences produced by the noblest of aims. Sadly, given the corruption and dependency we'll leave in our wake, without an introspective self-critique of our policies, America could turn Afghanistan into Central Asia's Haiti.]]>America and Pakistan: Partners With Diverging Intereststag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8591822011-05-08T19:23:47-04:002011-07-08T05:12:01-04:00Malou Innocenthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/malou-innocent/for years it's been an open secret that elements within the Pakistani government do not perceive the original Afghan Taliban, Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Haqqani Network, and other specific proxy groups as enemies, but as assets to Pakistani policy.

Consider comments made by Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, the head of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Only two years ago he defended the Taliban and its leader, Mullah Omar, to the German publication Der Spiegel:

"Shouldn't they be allowed to think and say what they please? They believe that jihad is their obligation. Isn't that freedom of opinion?"

Of course, Mullah Omar's "freedom of opinion" exhorts militants to pour over the border into neighboring Afghanistan and kill infidel American troops. Pasha's insistence that such views are defensible encapsulates America's enduring security challenge with Pakistan.

Since 9/11, the Pakistani government has claimed that its military is too ill-equipped and poorly-trained to effectively combat its internal guerrilla insurgency. That may be true, but it's also clear that the militancy plaguing the region is partly a byproduct of the Pakistani military's self-defeating ambition to extend its geopolitical reach into Afghanistan and throughout the region. For this reason, until elements within the Pakistani state make a fundamental shift in their strategic priorities, U.S. and NATO attempts to stabilize Afghanistan remain futile. Moreover, despite what U.S. officials would like to believe, no amount of pressure or persuasion will make Pakistan modify its policies, especially when it comes to reigning in extremists it's been nurturing for more than 30 years.

The core reality of the region is that after 9/11, rather than restructure, Pakistan rebalanced: President and Army General Pervez Musharraf and his army corps commanders decided to ally openly with the United States in the "War on Terror" and preserve their proxy assets as a hedge against Indian influence. As a result, Pakistan is feeling the heat on both sides, with American officials blasting Islamabad for refusing to cooperate fully, while Islamist extremists from inside Pakistan have turned against the government for throwing its support behind the United States.

Under such circumstances, the bilateral relationship has been punctuated by a number of melodramatic sideshows. Remember the recent diplomatic imbroglio over Raymond Davis, the CIA contractor detained in January for shooting and killing two Pakistani citizens? Or when last year Pakistan halted the flow of supply convoys for the NATO mission in Afghanistan? Or when right after President Obama took office U.S. officials began going into convulsions after learning that the Pakistani Taliban was only 60 miles from Islamabad?

Despite all the feel-good talk about partnership and cooperation, the reality is that America and Pakistan have competing strategic interests. Clearly, the two governments are pursuing very different and fundamentally antagonistic definitions of "joint cooperation."
]]>Pakistan, America's Feckless Allytag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8575982011-05-04T14:18:40-04:002011-07-04T05:12:01-04:00Malou Innocenthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/malou-innocent/
Yet the dangerous illusion persists within Washington that America needs Pakistan more than Pakistan needs America. It is well past time to face reality.

Washington's single-minded pursuit of sticking it out in Afghanistan forces policymakers to rationalize Pakistan's contribution to the region's security challenges. If anything, Pakistan's behavior underscores the futility of our continued presence in Afghanistan. Even in the more limited realm of counterterrorism, the U.S. cannot trust Pakistan completely.

For years, individuals either within or with ties to Pakistan's spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), have collaborated with insurgents that frequently attack U.S. and coalition troops in Afghanistan. Many experts, such as venerated foreign policy expert Michael O'Hanlon, explain away this disquieting reality by arguing in a circle: they insist America needs Pakistan for its operations in Afghanistan by assuming that America's presence in Afghanistan is critical to America's security. Mr. O'Hanlon recently justified the necessity of maintaining ties with Pakistan, even as he equated bilateral relations to a bad marriage both parties can't get out of. He argued, "the right approach is to try even harder to make it work."

There seems to be more and more evidence, however, that it is worthwhile for America to file for divorce.

Take, for instance, the recent raid against bin Laden. Allegedly, American officials didn't notify Pakistan about the operation, and for good reason. In 2005, and then again in 2008, the ISI thwarted attempts by the CIA to capture militant leader Sirajuddin Haqqani, warning him in advance about the raids. "Our guys couldn't believe it," a former CIA officer told journalist Matthew Cole. "CIA had worked on this thing for some time, and the son of a bitch tipped Haqqani off."

Additionally, evidence suggests that retired army officers with links to the ISI meet regularly with insurgents attacking U.S. forces in Afghanistan. A report last year by the London School of Economics found that elements of the ISI not only fund the Taliban, but are also represented on the militant movement's leadership council.

When compared to its tumultuous partnership with the U.S., Pakistan appears to have better working relations with militants who attack America. According to leaked documents from Guantanamo Bay obtained by WikiLeaks, prison detainees associated with the ISI may have provided support to al Qaeda. The September 2007 document, titled "Matrix of Threat Indicators for Enemy Combatants," lists the ISI as one of 65 "terrorist and terrorist support entities." Elements within the Pakistani government may have also played a direct role in the November 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, and the bombings of the Indian embassy in Kabul in July 2008 and October 2009.

Pakistan wants to have its cake and eat it too, much like a cheating spouse. And U.S. myopia allows this to happen. Afghanistan is not a vital security interest to the U.S., yet trotting out an endless array of justifications for remaining in Afghanistan increases Pakistan's leverage by allowing it to take advantage of America's dependence. Only by extricating itself from Afghanistan can the U.S. decrease its reliance on Pakistan. In fact, Washington and Islamabad are more likely to ameliorate their unrelenting hostility if the U.S. expedited its withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Policymakers must develop a strategy that accepts the reality that it is not within their power to alter the interests of competing powers in the region. Even the raid against bin Laden relied on a crucial break from Pakistan. Thus, limiting our goals to capturing and killing terrorists through counterterrorism would be sufficient.

It is time for the U.S. to reframe its partnerships to better reflect its true strategic interests.

Malou Innocent is a foreign policy analyst at the Cato Institute.]]>Bin Laden's Death and the Debate Over the U.S. Mission in Afghanistantag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8575872011-05-04T14:04:05-04:002011-07-04T05:12:01-04:00Malou Innocenthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/malou-innocent/claim that bin Laden's demise proves that our nation-building mission is showing signs of success, others recognize that this momentous achievement justifies scaling down our presence in Afghanistan. Indeed, rather than expansive counterinsurgency campaigns, targeted counterterrorism measures would suffice.

It is encouraging that Republican members of Congress are questioning the mission. Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN), ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, expressed his concern yesterday:

[Senator Lugar] said Afghanistan no longer holds the strategic importance to match Washington's investment. He cited recent comments from senior national-security officials that terrorist strikes on America are more likely to be planned in places like Yemen.

Lugar raised concerns that U.S. policy on Afghanistan is focused more on building up its economic, political and security systems. "Such grand nation-building is beyond our powers," he said bluntly.

Most poignantly, he summed up the problem as such:

With Al Qaeda largely displaced from the country, but franchised in other locations, Afghanistan does not carry a strategic value that justifies 100,000 American troops and a $100 billion per year cost, especially given current fiscal constraints.

These realities have neither shifted the GOP establishment's talking points on defense, nor the Obama administration's "stay-the-course" policy in Afghanistan. Nevertheless, this debate, especially among Republicans, is important. As my Cato colleague Ben Friedman has pointed out in original research, the Tea Party Republicans that swept into office last November have done little to shift the overarching debate about the efficacy of nation-building. Perhaps increased calls for rethinking the mission will have to come from senior GOP types like Lugar. As my other Cato colleague, Gene Healy, trenchantly notes, "There was always something odd about conservatives jumping from 'they hate us because we're free' to 'if we make them free, then they won't hate us.'"

Cato scholars have been making the case for de-escalation from Afghanistan for the pastseveral years. Hopefully, more Republicans will recognize, as most Libertarians already do, that it is inconsistent to espouse talk of fiscal responsibility and limited government at home while engaging in social engineering and nation-building abroad. More Republicans should recognize that there is nothing conservative about wasting taxpayer dollars on a mission that weakens America economically and militarily. As Cato founder and president Ed Crane has argued, it's time for the GOP leadership to return to its non-interventionist roots.

Since 9/11, America's mission in Afghanistan has evolved dramatically. It's gone from punishing al Qaeda and the Taliban to paving roads and building schools. To imagine that the U.S.-led coalition can create a functioning economy and establish civilian and military bureaucracies through some "government in a box" highlights the ignorance and arrogance of our central planners in Washington.

Let's hope that the landmark death of Osama bin Laden brings a swift end to our ongoing investment and sacrifice.]]>The Once Again Forgotten War in Afghanistantag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8472142011-04-10T17:08:42-04:002011-06-10T05:12:01-04:00Malou Innocenthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/malou-innocent/
Afghan President Hamid Karzai recently announced that his central government will be taking over seven areas of the country from the international coalition. But the Afghan government remains incredibly weak, widely distrusted, and underrepresented in poorly secured areas of the country. The 150,000-strong Afghan army, whose performance and effectiveness remainsquestionable, has an officer corps teaming with ethnic fissures and competing sub-national interests. Meanwhile, the Afghan police force has developed a reputation for desertion, illiteracy, and, among Afghans, rapaciousness.

Even the administrative structure of the Afghan state remains brittle. The Interior Ministry, for example, is teaming with foreign civilian advisers, mostly American contractors. And just three years ago, the Finance Ministry had no idea where 80% of its money was going, according to the Special Advisor on Development for the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), whom I interviewed in Afghanistan. The World Bank estimates that the Afghan government will not be financially self-sufficient until 2023, with the international community, primarily U.S. taxpayers, flipping the bill.

Overlooking the sorry state of the Afghan government, the Obama administration's latest status report on the war claims that new counterinsurgency tactics have shown progress. As a result, the administration will begin the reduction of U.S. forces this July, which troops and how many of them remains up in the air. In truth, much of southern Afghanistan -- the focus of the coalition's military offensives -- has seen only limited and potentially unsustainable security improvements, while the size of low risk areas in the north, west, and center of the country has shrunk significantly.

Amid this atmosphere of violence and uncertainty there have also been mounting tensions between the international coalition and the civilian government of Hamid Karzai. Last year, right before I went to Afghanistan, Karzai imposed a crackdown on alcohol consumption and closed a number of expat bars around Kabul because they were deemed offensive to Islam. The Afghan general who carried out the alcohol raids told the Los Angeles Times it was for "Allah's sake."

This may not matter much to us in America, but these issues matter considerably to the conservative local Afghans who live under foreign occupation. They see outsiders changing their mayors, governors, and customs; they are told how to dress their women, what is culturally acceptable, and what is culturally backwards. In America, we get angry when people redistribute our taxes, yet we forget how intrusive our own government is to foreign societies.

Additionally, over the past year, night raids have been greatly expanded and civilian casualties have gone up dramatically. Just last month, nine Afghan children gathering firewood in Kunar were killed in a NATO air strike. General David Petraeus, the commander of international troops, apologized profusely; Karzai said his apology was not enough.

All of this combined to create a tinderbox of resentment ready to go up in flames. The spark came several weeks ago when Florida pastor Terry Jones burned a Koran. This set off angry and violent demonstrations in several cities across Afghanistan. Nineteen people have died, including seven U.N. workers. Dozens more have been injured. Karzai thought that he stood to gain some political capital from the development and used the incident as an opportunity to condemn the occupation.

America is widely scorned throughout the region. The United States has spent over $400 billion dollars (with the meter still running) to put in place a weak, unaccountable, and illegitimate Afghan central government. And violence and inter-cultural hostility between locals and foreigners continues to rise. This is what our leaders are calling a "victory."